Food Safety and Its Effects on the Regulation of Agricultural Products

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Recommended: what brought upon the meat inspection act of 1906

Food Safety:
Its Effects on the Regulation of Agricultural Products
Foodborne illnesses and disease have always been a great problem concerning human health. Until the advent of the industrial revolution, the human population significantly increased over that time period and has been steadily rising ever since. Food production, along with the human population, needed to be significantly increased as well. One of the problems of this new period was the introduction of more disease; people were often packed together in small locations and these cities breed all sorts of different pathogens. Widespread cholera outbreaks and other foodborne illness outbreaks were common place. People began to become afraid of the food they ate and doubted the cleanliness of agricultural products. Government involvement was needed to combat these new outbreaks. Food safety laws were then put in place to prevent widespread outbreaks and to ensure the quality of food. Food safety has made a profound impact on the regulation and production of agricultural products.
The introduction of food safety within the United States can be accredited to the literary works done by muckraking journalists during the early 1900’s. The use of yellow journalism exposed the horrid conditions of the meat packing industry. A great example would be the novel The Jungle, written by Upton Sinclair, which helped expose many of the problems present in the food industry. After these pressures were put in place the United States government intervened and proposed two acts: Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the Meat Inspection Act. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was part of the first consumer protection laws enacted by the Federal Government in the 20th century. This act ulti...

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...een exposed. This includes the withholding of information from food manufactures and also to increase support for health inspectors so they can properly do their job. Health inspectors should be the ones with authority in the food industry and companies should comply with food safety regulations, but since companies do not want lose money they are sometimes unwilling to comply with the USDA’s demands. On the other hand, the USDA has had some success, like reducing the instance of foodborne illnesses over the coming year. The USDA has also been successful in publicly announcing food safety tips around the country with simple guidelines: clean, separate, cook, and chill. U.S food safety has played an important role in the regulation and production of agriculture products and will continue to improve the cleanliness and wholesomeness of U.S agricultural products.

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